TNFD
Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures · Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures
TNFD is the voluntary framework for disclosing nature-related issues - biodiversity, ecosystems and the services they provide - to investors and lenders. Its framework, including its LEAP assessment approach, is the basis the ISSB is drawing on for a forthcoming IFRS Practice Statement on nature-related disclosures. TNFD has indicated it would conclude its own technical work programme depending on the outcome of that ISSB process, likely in 2027.
What this means in Singapore
Nature is not currently in scope of mandatory Singapore reporting. Singapore's regime is climate-first: SGX Practice Note 7.6 requires IFRS S2 plus the climate-relevant provisions of IFRS S1, and ACRA's draft local standards keep that shape. Nothing in the SGX Listing Rules or the ACRA timeline requires nature-related disclosure today.
Three things qualify that.
1. The rules already permit and encourage more. The SGX framework permits issuers to apply the full ISSB Standards, not only the climate-relevant subset, and ACRA has said it will review ISSB requirements beyond climate in future. An issuer that wants to disclose nature-related matters can do so within the existing framework.
2. GRI 101 is already live, and it bites hardest on Singapore's regional footprint. GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 has applied to reports published on or after 1 January 2026, and disclosure 101-5 requires reporting of locations with biodiversity impacts, including supply-chain locations. For Singapore-headquartered agri-commodity, palm oil, rubber, timber and seafood groups, the material impacts sit in Indonesia, Malaysia and the wider region, not on Singapore soil - and GRI 101 asks for them by location. Any Singapore issuer reporting in accordance with GRI and operating in those value chains is already inside a nature reporting requirement, whether or not it thinks of it that way.
GRI 13 (Agriculture, Aquaculture and Fishing) has applied since 1 January 2024 and reinforces the point for exactly those groups. GRI 102: Climate Change 2025 additionally requires reporting of biodiversity impacts associated with climate actions, so from 1 January 2027 a nature-based carbon project is both a climate disclosure and a biodiversity disclosure.
3. The ISSB Practice Statement is the thing to watch. Because Singapore's regime tracks the ISSB, the practical question for a Singapore preparer is not whether to adopt TNFD but what the ISSB does with it. The sequence to follow: exposure draft targeted for October 2026 with a 120-day comment period, then the ISSB's deliberations, then whatever ACRA and SGX RegCo decide about scope beyond climate. Applying a Practice Statement is intended to have the full effect of an ISSB Standard for those who apply it - so if and when it lands, it becomes directly usable within the existing SGX framework without any rule change.
What a Singapore company can sensibly do now.
- If you report under GRI and have regional agricultural, aquaculture, forestry or extractive exposure, treat GRI 101 as the immediate obligation and get the location data in place. That data is the hardest part of any nature disclosure and it serves whatever comes next.
- If you are a financial institution, note that nature-related dependencies and impacts reach you through the portfolio, in the same way financed emissions do, and that the categories involved overlap with the ones your Scope 3 category 15 work already touches.
- Do not build a separate TNFD reporting process in parallel with an ISSB process. The direction of travel is that they converge.
- Watch the ISSB project page rather than relying on secondary commentary, since the exposure draft timing is a target and has not yet been met.
How the framework works
Why nature is on the agenda at all
Climate reporting matured first because greenhouse gases reduce to a single comparable unit. Nature does not. A company's dependence on pollination, freshwater, soil or coastal protection cannot be added up into one number, and its impacts on ecosystems are local in a way emissions are not. That is the problem TNFD set out to solve: giving companies and financial institutions a common way to describe nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities in terms investors can use.
Where TNFD stands now
TNFD is a voluntary framework. No Singapore rule requires it. Its significance today is largely as the source material for what comes next: the ISSB has agreed to propose nature-related requirements drawing on the TNFD framework, including the LEAP approach, and TNFD has indicated it would conclude its technical work programme subject to the outcome of that process, likely in 2027.
That makes TNFD a framework in transition. A company adopting it now is, in effect, getting a head start on the ISSB material rather than committing to a permanent parallel system.
A note on scope of this page. The research behind this hub covers TNFD's relationship to the ISSB, to GRI and to Singapore, but does not include a primary-source walkthrough of the TNFD recommendations themselves. Rather than reconstruct them from memory, this page describes what is verifiable and points to tnfd.global for the framework documents. Treat any secondary summary of TNFD's disclosure structure, including counts of recommended disclosures, with appropriate caution until you have checked it against TNFD's own publications.
The ISSB route
The ISSB's project began as research into biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services and has become a standard-setting project on nature-related disclosures. The key decisions:
- At its April 2026 meeting in Beijing the ISSB agreed to propose nature-related requirements in the form of an IFRS Practice Statement rather than a new standard, drawing on the TNFD framework including the LEAP approach. The decision was announced in May 2026.
- In July 2026 all twelve ISSB members confirmed that due process had been satisfied and agreed a 120-day comment period.
- The exposure draft is targeted for publication in October 2026, timed to the biodiversity COP. As at 19 September 2026 it had not been published, so treat October 2026 as a target rather than a date.
The ISSB Chair's framing is worth quoting because it explains the choice of instrument: providing material nature-related disclosures is not optional, because IFRS S1 already requires it; a Practice Statement will guide companies on how to provide such disclosures. Applying the Practice Statement is intended to have the full effect of an ISSB Standard for companies that apply it, while not modifying IFRS S1 or IFRS S2.
That last point matters. It means nature is not being added as a new mandatory topic standard on top of climate. It is being treated as something IFRS S1's general materiality requirement already catches, with guidance layered on to make it practicable.
How this interacts with GRI
GRI approaches nature from the impact side rather than the enterprise-value side. GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 replaced GRI 304 and has applied to reports published on or after 1 January 2026. Its eight disclosures cover policies to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, management of impacts using the mitigation hierarchy, access and benefit-sharing, identification of impacts, locations with impacts including supply-chain locations, direct drivers of biodiversity loss, changes to the state of biodiversity, and ecosystem services.
GRI also maintains a TNFD mapping among the linkage documents on its global alignment page, alongside mappings to the ISSB, CDP, ESRS and others.
So a company serious about nature reporting today has two live reference points - GRI 101, which is already in effect and impact-focused, and TNFD, which is voluntary and investor-focused and is being absorbed into the ISSB system. They are complementary rather than alternatives, and GRI 101's location-level requirement is generally the more demanding of the two on data.
Keeping track
TNFD publishes a standard news feed at tnfd.global, which is one of the more reliable ways to follow the wind-down of its technical programme and the handover to the ISSB. Activity has been intermittent - its most recent feed item as at mid-September 2026 dated from June 2026 - so the ISSB project page is the better place to watch for the exposure draft itself.
Standards in this family
5 documents.
TNFD's voluntary framework for disclosing nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities. It is the source material the ISSB is drawing on for its forthcoming nature-related Practice Statement.
The TNFD framework is published by the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures and is available free from tnfd.global, which also carries its publications, knowledge bank material and guidance.
What is established from this hub's sources. The ISSB has agreed to propose nature-related requirements drawing on the TNFD framework, including its LEAP approach. GRI maintains a TNFD mapping among the linkage documents on its global alignment page. TNFD has indicated it would conclude its technical work programme subject to the outcome of the ISSB process, likely in 2027.
What this page deliberately does not do. The research behind this hub does not include a primary-source walkthrough of the TNFD recommendations, so no structure, disclosure count or pillar breakdown is asserted here. Descriptions of TNFD's disclosure architecture circulate widely in consultancy material and are not always accurate. Go to tnfd.global for the framework documents themselves, and treat any secondary summary as a starting point rather than an authority.
Why it is still worth reading. Even as a framework in transition, TNFD is the most developed articulation of how to think about nature in financial terms, and it is the material that will underpin the ISSB Practice Statement. A company that engages with it now will find the eventual ISSB guidance familiar rather than alien.
Practical caution. Do not commit publicly to reporting against TNFD as a permanent framework while its own future is being determined by the ISSB process. A commitment to disclose material nature-related information, prepared with reference to TNFD and adaptable to the ISSB Practice Statement, is the more durable formulation.
TNFD's structured assessment approach, which the ISSB has agreed to draw on in developing its nature-related Practice Statement.
LEAP is TNFD's named approach for working through nature-related issues, and it is explicitly one of the elements the ISSB agreed to draw on when it decided to propose nature-related requirements in the form of an IFRS Practice Statement.
Why an approach rather than a metric set. The reason nature reporting needs a process rather than a list is that nature is place-specific. Whether a facility matters ecologically depends on where it is, what ecosystem it sits in, what that ecosystem provides, and who else depends on it. A single global metric cannot capture that, so the framework instead gives a repeatable method for finding the material issues.
The practical consequence. The heavy lifting in any nature assessment is locating the operations and value chain nodes that matter, which is data work rather than disclosure work. It is also exactly what GRI 101 disclosure 101-5 requires - locations with biodiversity impacts, including supply-chain locations. A Singapore company that builds a defensible location dataset for GRI 101 has built most of what any nature assessment approach will ask for.
Accuracy note. This hub's sources refer to the LEAP approach by name and record that the ISSB is drawing on it, but do not set out its steps in detail. The expansion of the acronym and the content of each step should be taken from TNFD's own publications rather than from secondary summaries.
The ISSB agreed in April 2026 to propose nature-related requirements as an IFRS Practice Statement drawing on TNFD, announced the decision in May 2026, and agreed a 120-day comment period in July 2026. The exposure draft is targeted for October 2026 and had not been published as at 19 September 2026.
The project. What began as an ISSB research project on biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services has become a standard-setting project on nature-related disclosures.
The decisions, in sequence.
- April 2026, Beijing meeting: the ISSB agreed to propose nature-related requirements in the form of an IFRS Practice Statement rather than a new standard, drawing on the TNFD framework including the LEAP approach.
- May 2026: the decision was announced publicly.
- July 2026: all twelve ISSB members confirmed that due process had been satisfied and agreed a 120-day comment period.
- October 2026: target date for publication of the exposure draft, timed to the biodiversity COP. As at 19 September 2026 the exposure draft had not been published. This is a target, not a fact.
Why a Practice Statement. The ISSB Chair's reasoning is that providing material nature-related disclosures is already not optional, because IFRS S1 requires disclosure of material sustainability-related risks and opportunities. What companies lack is guidance on how. A Practice Statement supplements IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 without modifying them, and applying it is intended to have the full effect of an ISSB Standard for companies that apply it.
What it means for TNFD. TNFD has indicated it would conclude its own technical work programme subject to the outcome of this process, likely in 2027. So the framework and the Practice Statement are not competing futures; one is becoming the other.
What it means in Singapore. Singapore's climate-first regime means nature is not in mandatory scope today. But because the SGX framework already permits full ISSB application and ACRA has said it will review ISSB requirements beyond climate in future, a Practice Statement would be immediately usable here without any rule change - which makes this project the single most relevant nature-related item for a Singapore preparer to track.
TNFD has indicated it would conclude its technical work programme subject to the outcome of the ISSB process, likely in 2027.
This is the single most important thing to know before committing resources to TNFD as a standalone framework: its technical work programme is expected to conclude, subject to how the ISSB process lands, likely in 2027.
Why the qualification matters. The wind-down is conditional. It depends on the ISSB exposure draft appearing, going through a 120-day comment period, and the ISSB finalising a Practice Statement that adequately carries the framework's content. None of that has happened yet. So the honest position today is that TNFD remains a live voluntary framework whose institutional future is being settled elsewhere.
The parallel with TCFD. The pattern is familiar. The TCFD's work was declared complete in July 2023, the task force disbanded in October 2023, and its recommendations now operate through IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, with the IFRS Foundation taking over monitoring from 2024. The IFRS Foundation also absorbed the Transition Plan Taskforce materials in 2024 and used them as the basis for its June 2025 transition plan guidance. Nature looks set to follow the same route, with one difference: the instrument is a Practice Statement rather than a standard.
Practical guidance. Do not architect internal systems around TNFD-specific outputs that may not survive the transition. Do invest in the underlying data - where operations and value chain nodes are, what ecosystems they interact with, what the dependencies are - because that data is framework-agnostic and will be required by whatever emerges.
How to follow it. TNFD publishes a news feed at tnfd.global, though activity has been intermittent. For the decisive developments, watch the ISSB's nature-related disclosures project page, which is where the exposure draft and the subsequent deliberations will appear.
GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 has applied to reports published on or after 1 January 2026. For a Singapore company reporting in accordance with GRI, nature disclosure is already a live obligation, not a future one.
While TNFD is voluntary and the ISSB Practice Statement is not yet published, GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024 is in force. It replaced GRI 304: Biodiversity 2016, which has been removed from GRI's download page entirely.
Its eight disclosures. Three topic management disclosures - 101-1 policies to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, 101-2 management of biodiversity impacts applying the mitigation hierarchy of avoid, minimise, restore and rehabilitate, then offset, and 101-3 access and benefit-sharing. Five topic disclosures - 101-4 identification of impacts, 101-5 locations with impacts, 101-6 direct drivers of biodiversity loss, 101-7 changes to the state of biodiversity, and 101-8 ecosystem services.
An organisation reporting in accordance must report whichever of 101-4 to 101-8 are relevant to its impacts, alongside the three topic management disclosures.
The hard requirement is 101-5. It asks for impacts at the level of locations, including supply-chain locations. That is a materially harder data ask than any narrative disclosure, and for Singapore-headquartered groups it points squarely at regional operations and suppliers rather than at Singapore sites.
The climate connection. GRI 102: Climate Change 2025, effective 1 January 2027, requires reporting of biodiversity impacts associated with climate actions. So GRI 101 and GRI 102 have to be read together: a reforestation or land-based carbon project is simultaneously a climate disclosure under 102-9 or 102-10 and a biodiversity disclosure under GRI 101.
Why this belongs on a TNFD page. If someone asks when nature reporting starts mattering in Singapore, the accurate answer is that for GRI reporters it already does. The data built for GRI 101 is the same data any TNFD or ISSB nature assessment will need.